MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – January 17, 2013

More Mali (1a) “The Canadian military operation to support the French-led mission in Mali is “going smoothly” and within “expectations,” according to officials at the Department of National Defence. A Canadian C-17 military transport plane has arrived at a base in France and will leave for the Mali capital of Bamako once it is loaded with heavy equipment, according to Jay Paxton, a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter Mackay. Paxton told CBC News the plane will likely arrive in Bamko on Thursday and will operate in a non-combat role. The transport plane left CFB Trenton on Tuesday afternoon, the second aircraft prepared for the mission after the first C-17 experienced a problem with its generator ….”

More Mali (2) Meanwhile, not too far away….“Helicopters and personnel from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa are heading to Mauritania within weeks to support training for African troops, joining Canadian special forces soldiers also heading to that nation. The Canadian military will also consider future training missions in Africa after it assesses the exercise which takes place in February and March. The military personnel, including pilots and maintenance staff, are from the 427 Special Operations Aviation Squadron. They will be taking part in Flintlock 13, a U.S.-sponsored training exercise in Mauritania. A small detachment of Griffon helicopters are also being sent to Mauritania. The helicopters and crew will eventually join up with around two dozen personnel from the Canadian Special Operations Regiment (CSOR), also from Petawawa. Those soldiers arrived in Niger on Monday to begin working with soldiers from that nation. The Niger and Canadian soldiers will then travel to Mauritania. In total, around 50 Canadian special forces members will be involved in Flintlock. Flintlock 13 is billed as an exercise that is aimed at “capacity building of several countries within the Western Africa Sahel Region which contributes to regional security.” But officers involved in past Flintlock exercises have acknowledged that the training will help countries in the region in their battle against al-Qaeda ….”

More Mali (4a) Columnist on how Harper sucks no matter what he does“…. Ready to join the invasion of Iraq. Unwilling to send more than one plane for one week to Mali. That’s a long road. But Mr. Harper has not walked it alone. At each turn, he was right behind the Americans ….”

More Mali (4b) Another columnist on how Harper sucks no matter what he does “What a difference experience makes. Fightin’ Steve Harper has become the reluctant warrior. The man who used to castigate Jean Chrétien’s Liberals for their mealy-mouthed approach to the war on terror now sounds a lot like … Jean Chrétien. Harper grudgingly agreed this weekend to have the Royal Canadian Air Force aid French forces intervening in Mali. But he insists that Canada is still not militarily involved in the West African country’s civil war ….”

More Mali (4c) A former hostage held by AQ in Africa has a warning“…. If Mali and the wider Sahel region is to be freed from the jihadi scourge, we will have to better remember this hard-learned lesson. This must be about so damaging and degrading the capabilities and numbers of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and its clones that they won’t soon again threaten the peace and stability of our friends across this vulnerable region; nothing else.”

More Mali (4d) Analyst“Since France began aerial bombardment of Islamist rebels in Mali last week, the larger worry has shifted from within the beleaguered country’s borders to the wider world. There are concerns not only about Operation Serval, as this military intervention is known, causing belligerents or other kinds of chaos to cross neighboring states’ borders, but also fears of international retaliation – perhaps in the form of a terrorist attack, or an assault on foreign diplomatic targets ….”

More Mali (5a) And how do the bad guys respond to drag others into the mess?“Islamist gunmen holding dozens of Western hostages and scores of Algerians at a gas plant deep in the Sahara desert let some them speak to the media on Thursday to warn that they would be blown up if the site is stormed. Governments around the globe were holding emergency meetings to respond to one of the biggest international hostage crises in decades, which sharply raises the stakes over a week-old French campaign against al Qaeda-linked fighters in neighbouring Mali. A group calling itself the “Battalion of Blood” says it seized 41 foreigners, including Americans, Japanese and Europeans, after storming a natural gas pumping station and employee barracks in Algeria before dawn on Wednesday. The attackers have demanded an end to the French military campaign in Mali, where hundreds of French paratroops and marines are launching a ground offensive against rebels in a campaign that began a week ago with air strikes ….”